Jeannette Catsoulis

Normal — which heralds, according to the press notes, the birth of yet another franchise — navigates its cartoonish excesses with expected competence. As for Odenkirk, he’s golden; as mythology nerds will recall, Ulysses was also known as the Master of Cunning.

Bunnylovr, the first feature from Katarina Zhu, touches on various themes, none of which feels fully realized. Yet there is such a sweet symbiosis between Zhu’s intimate, easy directing style and her unselfconscious performance in the lead role — beautifully illuminated by Daisy Zhou’s gentle cinematography — that the movie’s aimlessness rarely grates.

In its quest to give us a little bit of everything, it finally delivers not nearly enough of anything.

Dreams might feel distant and frosty, but it has a lot to say about inequality and the prerogatives of privilege.

While much of this is muddled and repetitive, it is also now and then slyly amusing.

A depressing, downbeat thriller that hustles from one violent act to the next with only the flimsiest of narrative throughlines, the latest from the French Canadian director Maxime Giroux is an unfortunate misfire.

Occasionally cute and almost instantly forgettable, “People,” tidily directed by Brett Haley, offers less-than-witty dialogue.

This is a movie that wants to have it both way.

Sappy and silly, Eternity made me thank heaven for Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early as the quick-witted coordinators tasked with guiding our threesome to perpetual bliss. They’re a comic delight, and they aerate a movie that’s most touching when it’s least frantic.

Love + War chooses to go wide rather than deep, resulting in a movie that, while pleasingly dynamic, offers less psychological insight than the photographs she has gambled everything to take. And perhaps that’s as it should be.

Lawrence’s commitment to authenticity may be laudable (he filmed almost the entire project on the move in Canada), but it’s clear that he was so busy honoring the book, he forgot to entertain the audience.

Battling downpours and an abundance of nighttime shadows, the cinematographer Benjamin Kracun adds a classy, coppery richness where he can. But “Echo Valley,” directed by Michael Pearce (whose 2018 feature debut, “Beast,” mingled equally dissonant themes with far greater dexterity), is ultimately undone by Brad Ingelsby’s distracted script.

Directed, with workmanlike efficiency, by Len Wiseman, “Ballerina” is at once insultingly facile and infuriatingly obtuse, its unmodulated tumult leaving little room for nuance or personality.

Nonnas serves up ethnic comedy on a platter of ham and cheese.

Drop is pleasantly silly and minimally suspenseful.

High on revolutionary spirit, Freaky Tales is a frisky, frantic pastiche that doesn’t always make sense. . . Yet the visuals are meaty, and the filmmakers (whose last feature collaboration was on “Captain Marvel” in 2019) show considerable affection for their movie’s setting.

Bereft of chuckles or even a substantial story, this maudlin musical fable never escapes the drag of a lead character with supporting-player energy.

A sterile drama about state-controlled procreation, “The Assessment,” the first feature from the French director Fleur Fortuné, is visually stark and emotionally chilling.

This sci-fi twaddle, soothingly framed by rolling sand dunes and a slash of crystal coastline (dreamily photographed by David Chambille), eventually tests our patience.

Its characters may be stressed out, but its rhythms are leisurely, the skill of the actors mostly countering the weaknesses in the script.

"Section 31,” bravely directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, is a dog’s dinner of head-snapping reversals and explanatory dialogue — a movie with little on its mind but mayhem.

In one sense, Wolf Man is a generic, and not especially scary, cabin-in-the-woods frightener that leans too often on tenebrous lighting and ear-shredding sound effects. . . Yet the extreme pathos of Blake’s plight is palpable, and Whannell is determined to make us feel it.

The film’s escalating violence frequently smothers its sweeter, more haunting moments, such as Night using the game to ease Apolline’s fear of losing her brother.

This direct-to-streaming bauble benefits from two leads whose charm effortlessly outshines the material.

Wrapped in drab visuals and a doomy atmosphere, Absolution paints a world where lowlifes rule and neither doctors nor priests can be trusted. Yet there are moments when the beatdowns pause and a misty melancholy shines through.

Matt and Mara is less a movie than an idea for one. It doesn’t help that neither character is likable, or that the director and writer, Kazik Radwanski, fills the screen with close-ups in lieu of information.

Somehow, Penn never allows Clark’s inappropriateness to become predatory, and Johnson’s marvelously expressive features reveal details the dialogue declines to provide. Yet if there’s a finer point to any of this — beyond yes, talking to strangers is sometimes beneficial — it eluded me.

Margolin’s empathy for Thelma (he based the story on a scam perpetrated on his own grandmother) lends the film a sweetness and occasional poignancy that help mitigate much of the foolishness.